Of heart and heritage: two sisters’ Peranakan cooking ritual comes alive in this cosy V-ZUG kitchen

In this maritime-inspired home designed by Architology Interiors, sisters Eunice and Julie Yeo reconnect over Peranakan recipes and discover how V-ZUG elevates the rituals they learned from their grandmother

In many families, recipes are often passed down the age-old way—carefully handwritten notes covering the flour-covered pages of recipe books. But for homeowner Eunice Yeo, her late grandmother’s Peranakan dishes were preserved differently: by memory, intuition and the quiet confidence of “agak-agak” (estimation).  It is this deeply human, instinctive approach to cooking that she and her sister Julie have begun reclaiming in Eunice’s newly completed home, a maritime-inspired sanctuary designed by Terrence Quah, co-founder of Architology Interiors.

Cooking has always been the sisters’ language of love. Even after both got married and settled into homes of their own, they continued to visit one another simply to cook, exchange recipes, and catch up. “It was how we stayed close,” Eunice reflects. Their grandmother, a skilled Peranakan cook, never relied on recipes—everything was done by taste and feel. Recreating her dishes, Eunice shares, has become a way of honouring her memory while strengthening their own bond.

Among Eunice’s fondest memories was the ritual of preparing Nonya chang (glutinous rice dumplings) together as children. The sisters were tasked with separating glutinous rice grains—white in one pile, translucent in another—an exercise they found strangely fascinating. “Only now do we realise it’s because the kids had the best eyesight,” she laughs. These fragments of kitchen life, once mundane, have transformed into treasured recollections that anchor the sisters’ shared heritage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT_D7lj66Sw

Read the full article here. Thank you Tatler Asia for the feature!